MP3 - I need a beginners guide

[JRH]

Never thought I'd say this, but.....I want to make an MP3 recording.
This will be my first adventure into MP3. I want to make an old school rap cd for new years eve.
On my pc, I have audiograbber and WMP - Do I need something different?
Best quality is not my objective! Decent is just fine.
Some step by step instructions would be nice.
Thanks!

[Jim Clark]

step 1-decide what tracks you want

step 2- use Audio Grabber to rip each file to your hard drive-it will help to save them all to the same folder

step 3-fire up your encoder, which I assume is what the WMP is for, if not I'd recomend you download lame and a simple to use front end like Razor lame.

step 4-decide what bit rate encoding you want to use. The higher the number (320), the more it will sound like the original file. Too low (128 and below) and I think it sounds like caca. My preference would be 256 or 192, depending on how small you want the files to end up. Remember that higher is better

Step 5-add the files you wish to encode and specify your output folder, or where you want the files to go.

That's all there is to it.

jc